


your love is such a dream come true (I know, I know, I know I need you)

by aloneintherain



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mentions of past child abuse, Mutual Pining, Pre-Relationship, Protectiveness, ronan in knight armour, set during the Raven King, sharing dreams, the couple that fights nightmares together stays together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-15
Updated: 2017-06-15
Packaged: 2018-11-14 10:22:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11206080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aloneintherain/pseuds/aloneintherain
Summary: Adam and Ronan have been circling each other for months; it makes sense that they’d be drawn into each other’s dreams, too.Feat. Ronan in full armour, mutual pining, Gansey's dad face, and Adam and Ronan looking out for each other.





	your love is such a dream come true (I know, I know, I know I need you)

**Author's Note:**

> Anon asked: ‘could you do something with Adam and ronan from the raven cycle and one of them having a nightmare please? bc let's be real, both of their lives have left them with some solid nightmare material and I live for hurt/comfort.” And I thought, why not put them both through it? Together?
> 
> This is set during the Raven King, when (spoilers!) Cabeswater was growing more corrupted, and Ronan and Adam's feelings were an open secret between them. I also paid attention to Adam's developing thoughts on Robert Parrish. He hasn't reached that place of closure we saw in the epilogue, but he's started to make steps toward it.
> 
> Title from Seeing Stars by BØRNS. It's cheesy as hell, but I've been listening to it on repeat all day.
> 
> Warnings for mentions of blood and gore, instances of child abuse and discussions of past child abuse, and brief anxiety.

 

Adam and Ronan have been circling each other for months; it makes sense that they’d be drawn into each other’s dreams, too. Their dreams merge abruptly like two cars colliding head on, like two jars of paint spilt out on the ground, colours bleeding into each other.

Adam is at Aglionby, sequestered away in the ancient, overbearing library. It’s cramped in a way it isn’t in real life. All the air has been replaced by books, and dread fills Adam’s lungs. The ticking clock is unnaturally loud. The homework stacked by Adam’s elbow wobbles threateningly. Its height defies gravity.

The bookcases grow larger and larger the longer he sits there, the aisles shrinking. The library shudders. Black vines creep into his vision. Adam curls around his essay, the paper rough like tree bark beneath his pen. His ribcage is two sizes too small, and his eyes ache with how exhausted he is, and dark roots shift beneath the library carpet, shackling themselves around Adam’s legs—

The library doors burst open. Ronan stands in the doorway dressed in full armour. It clanks as he raises a hand at the writhing branches, and declares, voice echoing off the endless aisles of books, “Fuck off!”

The plants shift guiltily. Adam kicks the vines making a grab for his feet beneath the table. They skitter away before returning like probing fingers around his bony ankles.

“Fuck off!” Adam echoes. Ronan picks up a book and throws it at a bramble growing around the legs of Adam’s chair. “Ronan, sword.”

Ronan unsheathes a sword from his belt. He examines its shining length for a moment. “Alright then,” he decides, before diving into the sea of vines and hacking, wielding the sword like a machete.

The vines lay in pieces around them. Ronan breathes heavily. Adam palms one hand over his stumbling heart, the other brushing leaves off his sprawled homework. During the invasion, his workload has doubled in size.

“Parrish,” Ronan says.

Adam picks up his pen. His trembling hand can’t form sentences. He doesn’t have the words, doesn’t know what the essay is about, his soupy brain filled with nothing but fear.

“It’s done,” Ronan says. “You finished it.”

Adam puts the pen down. When he examines his work, he finds his cramped cursive where, seconds ago, there had been blank space.

Adam exhales roughly. “Work.”

“You don’t have a shift today,” Ronan says, and Adam believes him; Ronan knows when Adam’s on roster.

“Class.”

“Finished for the day.”

“Gansey.”

“Safe. He doesn’t need us right now.”

Adam gets up. Their surroundings are more forest than library, now. The black vines are gone, replaced by soft earth and tawny leaves. Orange light folds through the treetops. Odd bookcases are built into tree trunks, books carpeting the forest floor in place of moss.

“Good?” Ronan asks, and Adam nods, yes. Ronan sheathes the sword, and runs a hand over his shimmering breastplate. “Gansey talks about medieval shit too much. It’s infected me.”

“Nice sword.”

“Keep it in your pants, Parrish.”

“Was Gansey dressed as a king?” Ronan grimaces, and Adam grins. “So predictable, Lynch.”

“He was wearing tights and a cloak and everything, but instead of boots, he was wearing his damn boat shoes.”

Adam looks down at himself. His Aglionby uniform is a perfect duplicate, complete with the stray loop of thread on his shoulder that drives him crazy. “What about me?”

“I was about to make you the court jester, but then black tree vines started melting out of the walls.” Ronan sweeps a hand over his knight regalia. “I guess this is a metaphor. You’re welcome.”

It’s peaceful in this soft-coloured place. Adam is warm all over, like he’s standing beneath his spluttering shower head and soaking in hot water after a long day.

But, like the faulty water system at St Agnes, the warmth peters out eventually, turns to ice against Adam’s skin. The pink sky dissolves into a starless wash of black. Insects crawl out of the trees, out of the dirt, out of the spaces between their feet, a many-legged hive brain that writhes around them.

A wasp lands on Adam’s sweater. Immediately, he looks around for Gansey, and meets Ronan’s eyes. He nods. They were both thinking the same thing.

Nightmare things replace the books and golden swathes of leaves. They dive for Ronan, and he bats at them with his sword. Their claws and beaks bang nosily against his armour.

Adam grabs Ronan by the arm and pulls them through the thick brambles, thorns tearing at his uniform. Ronan cuts down any nightmares things that come at them from behind, while Adam directs them deeper and deeper into the forest.

Ronan shouts and collapses. Adam catches him, and folds beneath his weight. He sinks to his knees, and pulls Ronan into his arms. His head lolls in the crook of Adam’s neck, all soft skin and warm blood seeping out against Adam’s long fingers; he’s bleeding heavily from his shoulder, and small cuts litter his torso. His armour vanished in the quick sprint through the thorny forest, replaced by black pyjama pants, Ronan’s usual sleeping attire. His tattoo and the pale expanse of his chest are on display.

“So much for a knight,” Ronan says against Adam’s throat. Adam shudders.

“I don’t want a knight.”

Ronan grins, a mean, sharp-toothed thing. Blood drips down his chest. “Don’t pretend like you’ve never needed saving.”

“I’m my own knight in shining armour,” Adam says, and then grimaces at how that sounds out loud. “Pretend I didn’t say that.”

Ronan barks a laugh. “You been watching teen dramas again, Parrish?”

“I’m not Noah.”

“Unfortunately.” Ronan shifts in Adam’s arms. Wet dirt soaks through Adam’s pants; if the briny muck of this corrupted Cabeswater isn’t enough to ruin his uniform, then Ronan’s blood dripping between them is. “Noah’s much better company.”

“Don’t make me leave you here, Lynch.”

“I don’t see a glowing exit sign anywhere.”

A gurgle and a thump echo through the forest. Ronan tenses against him.

“Adam?!”

Ronan curls like a snake ready to pounce. They both recognise that voice.

“We’re dreaming,” Adam says.

“Help me up. We shouldn’t be laying down for whatever’s going to happen next.”

With Adam’s assistance, Ronan climbs to his feet. He wobbles a little, but seems have regained his energy. He looks around the dimly lit clearing. “Cabeswater, I need something…”

A sword juts out of the dirt. Rubies glint in the faint rays of sun cast through the black treetops. Ronan unsheathes it, and sticks it into the air.

“It took my armour, but it can’t take my weapon.”

“Another metaphor?” Adam asks.

“I’m going to fucking stab that demon,” Ronan says, gripping the sword with a dirty, clenched fist, “does that count as a metaphor?”

“Not really.”

They make their way through the forest again. Their bare feet step in something wet, and warm, and Ronan rears back as though struck.

Adam was never able to meet Niall Lynch face to face, but he’s seen the photos hanging at the Barns. This smear of a man—the pulpy brain matter, the limbs splayed out like a dropped doll, this mass of hair, blood, and bone ground into the mossy forest floor—doesn’t look like the smiling, dark haired father who had stood with an arm slung around a young Ronan’s shoulders. It barely looks human.

Ronan’s legs wobble beneath him. “Christ.”

Adam reaches out to steady him, but he’s knocked off his feet before he can make contact. He sprawls out on dirty leaves, cheeks and palms smudged with mud. Robert Parrish is a jolt of ice through Adam’s stomach.

Again, Ronan says, “Christ.”

Robert Parrish hefts the shotgun in his arms. The sight of it is near paralysing. It’s one of the few things Adam has ever found that renders everything, the entire world, an irrelevant blur. His entire world always narrows down to the blunt nozzle, the lazy fingers edging over the trigger, the downturned slant of his father’s mouth.

His father opens his mouth, and the shouts that pour out are also familiar. Adam pulls his gaze away, looks towards Ronan. The taller boy is ashen and bloody. The tight curl of his shoulders gives Adam the strength to lever himself onto his elbows, onto his hands and knees, and then to his feet.

He’s not letting anything keep him down anymore. Definitely not this man.

“Ronan,” Adam says, “it’s alright, I’m here. We both need to wake up.”

“Right.” Ronan breaths in shakily. “Switch?”

Adam glances from Robert Parrish to what’s left of Niall Lynch. There’s nothing there for him to fight. The real struggle is taking place in Ronan’s chest.

“That doesn’t seem fair,” Adam says.

“I’m the one with the sword.”

Ronan edges around the muck. His feet stick in the puddled blood, and Adam wants to reach across the space between them and lift Ronan up, carry him over the mess of his father’s dead body, stop him from having to go through this again.

Before Ronan and Adam can get to each other, Robert Parrish steps between them, lifts the shotgun, and hits Adam across the temple. His vision blurs out. Ronan’s shout is cut off. He barely feels the damp forest floor, and then—

Adam wakes tangled in cotton sheets and gasping. There are no dead leaves slicked with blood beneath him; no long fingered trees hanging over him; no gore splattered Niall Lynch, no red faced Robert Parrish; no pale Ronan clutching a ruby encrusted sword and trying to hold himself together. Adam can’t unearth things from his dreams. His nightmares stay buried behind his eyes.

Ronan’s don’t.

Adam wrestles out of bed and shoves his feet into sneakers, his arms into a jacket, and snatches up his car keys.

If Adam can’t carry Ronan to safety in the dreamscape, then he’ll do it in the waking world.

 

* * *

 

 

Gansey opens the door to Adam’s loud knocking. He’s in khakis, glasses perched on his nose, phone in hand. He looks partially dazed, as though stuck in some kind of fever state, his cheeks flushed. Adam would be concerned, but he’s busy. He shoves past Gansey none too gently.

Behind him, Gansey says into the phone, “Blue, I’m sorry to cut our time short, but I have to go. Adam’s here. He looks panicked. I’ll call you back.”

Gansey pulls the phone away from his ear. Blue’s voice, crackling and muffled through the line, calls out: “Adam! Be safe, you prick!”

Adam ignores her, and barges into Ronan’s room. On the bed, Ronan pants open-mouthed, his eyebrows furrowed as though in pain, and fists the sheets with both hands. He’s not struggling, but he’s fighting to hold on.

Gansey hovers in the doorway. “Is he okay?”

“We’ll see.” Adam shakes Ronan roughly. “Ronan. Ronan!”

Ronan jerks violently beneath Adam’s hand, and wakes with a bitten off shout. At the same time that his eyes fly open, blood smears across his chest, and wet leaves and forest dirt scatters across the bedsheets. Ronan’s feet are soaked with blood. A shotgun juts out beneath the bed.

Gansey hurries to Adam’s side, hands flapping over their gasping friend. “That’s a lot of blood. Does he need to go to the hospital? Are those fingerprints? Is that a _gun?!”_

“I’m fucking fine,” Ronan spits, shoving Gansey away. The shorter boy retreats to the doorway, only because Ronan is only this brisk and aggressive when he’s worked up, when he’s disorientated and pushed to his limits and needs space. Because Gansey trusts Adam to haul Ronan out of the bed and into the car if he really did need medical treatment. Because Gansey knows Adam can handle this.

Adam files that away to think over another time. He doesn’t need Gansey’s approval, but it’s a gratifying thing to have.

Ronan grasps at Adam’s shirt like he had in that rotted forest. Adam holds his wrist, and lets him hang on, lets Ronan slowly pull himself back together.

“You don’t live here,” Ronan says finally.

“You fought an overgrown library for me in full armour. I thought I should come and repay the favour.”

Ronan sifts through his bedspread with one hand—the other almost pulling Adam down with the strength of its grip—and tugs. From the rumpled comforter, a long, glinting sword emerges. The handle is embedded with rubies and latin engravings. Gansey comes forward again, but doesn’t take the sword until Ronan nods. He ducks out to examine the sword somewhere better lit than Ronan’s bedroom.

“Is that it? I was hoping for at least a breastplate.” Adam sighs. “At least Gansey is happy.”

“He’s going to be disappointed when he realises it has nothing to do with Welish kings.”

“What does the latin say?”

Ronan collapses back onto his dirty sheets. He looks exhausted for someone who has spent the night dreaming. Adam can relate.

“Probably something very rude, or very gay.” Ronan considers this. “Probably both, knowing me.”

Adam inches a little closer to Ronan. He doesn’t wipe the blood off of Ronan or pick at the mossy, blood slick leaves strewn across his bed, but he does press the hand Ronan has wrapped around his shirt closer to his skin, makes his inhales and exhales deeper, more exaggerated, so Ronan can match his breathing with Adam’s.

“The gun,” Adam says, because his eyes keep gravitated towards where it sits, poking out from beneath the bed. It had thrown him in the forest. He remembers the feel of it in his small hands when shooting cans under watchful supervision, knows the metallic smell to it and the weight against his ribs, against his chin.

“What if I pulled that fucker out of my dream, and you were here?” Ronan asks. It’s not a nice tone, but this isn’t a nice subject, and they are not always nice boys. “Then what would you have done, Adam?”

Adam matches Ronan’s words with something more clipped, less acidic. “You would’ve finally gotten the chance to run him through with that sword. Just like you’ve always wanted.”

“Fists,” Ronan corrects. “I wanted to use my fists until he was a piece of shredded meat, not use a pretty sword.”

Ronan lets his hand drop, as though sensing Adam’s sudden need for space. Adam stands and pulls the gun out. He points the nozzle at the ground and checks that its empty of bullets.

“Niall?” he asks, not looking at Ronan.

Ronan throws his legs over the side of the bed. He takes back the dreamed gun, and stashes it in the closest where Adam doesn’t have to look at it, and Gansey won’t have another heart-attack over it. Adam knows Ronan will bury it, or maybe burn it; he’ll do something with it that’ll make sure Adam never has to look at something so obviously his father’s again. Adam doesn’t need that kind of protection, but, like Gansey’s trust, like Blue’s muffled call to stay safe, Adam acknowledges it and quietly lets himself enjoy it.

“It wasn’t real,” Ronan says.

“I’m working through it,” Adam confesses. “The fear. I’m not the same person he ruined. I’m something more, now.” He picks a long leaf from Ronan’s pillow. The room smells of damp earth, blood, the stink of fear sweat, and ozone. All familiar things to them both. “I’m trying not to be afraid of him in real life, why should I be afraid of a dream version of him?”

Ronan stands a little taller at Adam’s words, like Adam’s words have righted something inside him. “I’m not that kid that found his dad cracked open. I’m not.” Ronan tugs at his leather bands, and sucks in a deep breath. “I’m not some weepy lost lamb Gansey had to scrape off a sidewalk.”

It’s the nighttime darkness and the fading adrenaline that pulls these words from their mouths. They’d never be this frank in the daylight. Ronan steps a little closer, and Adam puts his hand on the place where Ronan’s shoulder meets his neck, over the dark hooks tattooed on his skin. Ronan’s pulse thunders beneath Adam’s palm.

Adam meets Ronan’s gaze. They’re so close, Ronan’s bare, bloody feet almost touching Adam’s scuffed sneakers, their breaths mingled.

Out in the hallway, Gansey shouts, dad voice in full effect, “Ronan, is this the latin word for penis?”

They shuffle apart. They don’t jerk apart guiltily, but slowly move away, an understanding: now is not the right time.

“Busted,” Adam whispers.

“Told you it was both rude and gay,” Ronan whispers back.

Ronan leads the way out of the bedroom, Adam on his heels. Gansey is in the living room, sword held beneath a lamp as he examines it. His glasses slip down his nose. He peers over them at Ronan, thoroughly disapproving. “Ronan. Are you going to pretend not to be hurt again?”

Ronan runs a hand over his chest, and Adam swallows at the bare skin. Ronan brushes over visible claw marks and cuts put there by thorns and sharp branches. Niall Lynch’s blood has dried. The marks have coagulated. “Just scrapes,” Ronan says with a shrug, and then to Adam: “The worse injuries didn’t transfer through. I, um. I was focussing on not bringing anything back with me.”

“Hm,” Gansey says, and gets up to find their first aid kit.

Ronan catches Adam’s eye once again, and shakes his head. Gansey’s paternal instincts are legendary and inescapable. Adam bites down a laugh and abandons him to duck into the bathroom and check the forsaken mini fridge.

Adam gets onto his knees to peer at the contents. In the fridge’s dim glow, Noah’s eyes are a hazy blue. He always looks washed, especially these days, but right now, Noah is a wisp of fog stubbornly set into human shape, holding on tightly to his coherency. He looks exhausted with the effort.

“That must’ve been frightening, huh?” Noah says. He smiles weakly. “But Ronan looked good in armour.”

Adam doesn’t ask how Noah knows that. He grabs a couple of iced coffees from the fridge. No one in this apartment will be sleeping again tonight; they’ll need the caffeine.

“He looked ridiculous.”

“You thought he looked handddsomee,” Noah sing-songs. Adam nudges Noah with his foot. Noah is solid enough to rock at the force, and giggles into his hands. “You even liked the sword, too.”

“Rise above your status as an Aglionby boy,” Adam says, “and resist the urge to make to make a dick joke. Please.”

“You sound like Blue.”

“A compliment?”

“Of course.” Noah rests his chin on his knees. If he were human, Adam would say he looked halfway asleep, liable to doze off in the middle of this wasteland of a bathroom. “You guys are okay?

“We’re okay,” Adam agrees. He rises to his feet, knees cracking. “How are you, Noah?”

Noah smiles again. Adam hasn’t been keeping track of Noah the way he should, these days. He’s so busy, always has been busy, and Ronan and Gansey and Blue always seem to know something is wrong with Noah before Adam does.

“You should go check on Ronan,” Noah says instead of answering.

“Ronan is fine. Gansey’s with him.”

“Yeah, but I bet he _misses you._ ” Noah tries to wink. It’s a disconcerting sight on a smudged out face.

“Alright,” Adam says, and nudges Noah again with his sneaker, a lingering gesture that Noah sighs beneath, curling up tighter around his knees. “Goodnight, Noah.”

“Goodnight, Adam.”

Out in the main area, Gansey is sitting cross-legged on the floor, his journal and a spare notebook open in front of him. The dream sword and his phone are propped by his socked feet. Ronan reclines on Gansey’s unmade bed. He’s been cleaned up by Gansey washed off the blood, and dressed in clean jeans and a muscle tee.

Adam hands an iced coffee to each of them, and unscrews the lid of his own. Gansey waves a distracted hand at him. He seems oblivious to the coffee he drips on the pad of notes, too busy scribbling something down.

“What does Maura or Calla say?” Gansey asks.

“It’s almost 1am,” Blue says. He voice is even more crackly on speaker phone. “I’m not waking everyone up for anything short of an emergency.”

“Hey, Blue,” Adam says.

“Hey, Adam,” Blue says. “Are you alright? Gansey told me what happened.”

“I’m fine.”

Gansey shoves his glasses back up his nose with coffee wet fingers. “You’re sure this has never happened before?”

“Pretty sure. I think I would’ve known if Ronan was actually in my dreams before now, instead of just a dream version of him. I knew tonight. He showed up, and I just knew it was actually him, dreaming with me.”

“Aw, you’ve dreamt about me before, Parrish?” Ronan says, fake sweet.

“I dream about all of you,” Adam says, because it’s true.

Gansey peeks up at them. His smile is shy, a little loving. “I dream about you all as well.”

“Me, too,” Blue says.

Ronan sighs, but nods his head, an agreement that he, too, dreams about them. They’re too tightly bound to each other, their lives entangled even when asleep.

“Do you think it was Cabeswater that brought your dreams together?” Gansey asks. “Why would it do that?”

“Power in numbers?” Blue wonders.

They devolve into speculation. Gansey furiously takes notes from the floor, bent over his notes, glasses slipping back down his nose. Adam takes a seat on Gansey’s bed. The mattress creaks under his weight, and he ends up against Ronan, feet to thigh to shoulder. Ronan looks at him, and Adam nods, and Ronan puts a hand on Adam’s knee. It’s not the worst way to spend the night. Adam thinks, for all the hours of sleep he’s missing, he wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.


End file.
